Dev chided for referencing iffy iDevice “Platform Features”

Apple have been widely criticised for their review process. They seem to reject apps for no reason or at least reasons unknown and/or not understood by common folk. And apparently, mentioning that something doesn’t work because of “Apple’s policy” doesn’t fly.

The Palm Heroes team got a call from Apple shortly after submitting their new music app, Jukemaster, for review.Â Apple’s rep said something akin to the following:

Wow, you’ve got a great application! But the guys here wrote something that there’s a control in there that doesn’t work and instead displays the following text. In short, you’ve got an amazing app, but with a notice like this your sales and user reviews will be much worse. You may call it what you wish – some call it “company policy”, some “limitations”, others refer to it as “bugs” and the rest just say “platform features”. Whatever you say, there’s no way to explain it to the fans of Apple and so this kind of text will not go well with them. It would be much better for you to fix the text and send a request to Dev Connection to open the required features for developers.

Take a tissue, wipe the condescension from your screen; devs are no fools and in the case of the Palm Heroes Team, were principally right: the platform limited the usefulness of their app. But, confronting Apple is something not to do, especially in their own backyard.

What’s the end tally? Well, Apple don’t take kindly to “platform features” used in or out of context and will employ negotiators who are well versed in rhetoric to make that point clear. Is that their secret of their success? Who knows, but here’s to finding out when Apple finally TAKE OVER THE WORLD!

Features of the upcoming app in question:

Jukemaster is a good-looking music player for musicians, that allows easy learning songs by ear.

Jukemaster is NOT a standard player replacemet, as it can only play one song at a time, and is designed primarily for musical training.

Jukemaster features:

Choose a song from your library

Rewind/FastForward vinyl touch control

MARK button to set the beginning of a fragment

Pause/Play button

LOOP button to loop a fragment (from the beginning or from the set mark)

Volume knob

Speed knob (doesn’t work for media library MP3s, this control will be used in later versions of the app, with user-uploaded MP3s via WIFI)

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A project manager in a major telecommunications supplier, an iPhone junkie and lately - a TMA editor. Love long walks on the beach and my wife, who is the most beautiful girl on the face of this planet.
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